The Truth Behind us All

Going on a science tangent today.  Please bear with me, because I think many of you might like where this is going.

When the egg and sperm cell first fuse together to create your own unique jumble of DNA that makes you you, the cells go through some immediate replication, creating a ball of cells that stays roughly the same size (the average size of a period printed on a page) but is rather dense in the sheer number of cells now occupying that space.  

The next step in the process is for the cells to shift around a bit, where they indent in and start to form a concave section (called a blastopore) and pushing it further up.  In other words, if you have a piece of play-dough and are working a hole from one end all the way to the other side, that's essentially what happens.  The cells re-shape so that no cell is separated or torn away, but simply moves to accommodate this new arrangement.  Ultimately, this will create openings for the nutrients and waste to flow in and out of, all the while keeping the system as closed as possible.  This path eventually becomes the digestive tract, helping to determine what is inside and what is outside the body.  

Kind of like these weird, slippery toys.

We are in a certain category of creatures called deuterostomes.  This means that the hole that formed first, that becomes part of the digestive tract, will eventually becomes the anus.  

For a brief moment in your life, you were literally just an asshole.  

Whether or not the person that cut you off in traffic has ever grown out of that state, who can say?  But we were all for a short moment only an asshole.

Happy New Year!